When consulted by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology as the best way to infuse their technologically heavy curriculum with art, Eames rejected the idea of additional art courses or fine arts programs as "an aesthetic vitamin concentrate." Instead he designed an alternative situation, a program for enriching the student's (and the university's) communicative possibilities to the point where they could experience the aesthetic possibilities of their own discipline.

In the proposal Eames would have each student near the end of his M.I.T. career join one or two other students in teaching something of their major specialty to an elementary school class for a semester. The teaching could take the form of films, exhibits, lectures, games, models -- whatever the team needed to make what they knoew and understood meaningful to children. "...If the M.I.T. student is going to learn anything about art," Eames argued, "he will learn it here."